Sex and the City (TV Program)

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares88 Views

    ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 3, Episode 4 Recap: Guilty

    by

    Aidan says he invited Carrie to stay with him longer in Virginia because he felt guilty. But is that really true?Season 3, Episode 4: ‘Apples to Apples’Is it time for all of us to face the very real possibility that Aidan is a narcissist?For the second time in their yearslong love affair, Aidan has lured Carrie to the countryside. In “Sex and the City” Season 4, Aidan finds a backwoods cabin in the unfortunately named Suffern, N.Y., and all but forces Carrie to spend weekends up there with him and a domestic terrorist squirrel.This time, though, Carrie is in Virginia with Aidan, not so much against her will. In last week’s episode, Carrie eagerly showed up down south to deliver Aidan a key to “their” (insert eye-roll emoji) Gramercy palace, and then Aidan asked her to stay.Why, exactly, does he do that? Carrie asks Aidan that very question toward the end of this episode. There is only one correct answer, and it goes something like: “Because you’re the love of my life. I miss you, and I wish we could be together all the time, and I just wanted to feel that for at least a few days.”But Aidan tells Carrie nothing of the sort. He says simply, “I felt guilty because you came all the way down here, and if I couldn’t ask you to stay, what does that say about us?”Here is what I think: I think that response solidifies for viewers that Aidan is a deeply selfish, stubborn, manipulative jerk who is dead-set on making everyone close to him bend to his will.For starters, Aidan has successfully maneuvered his way into getting what he wants out of Carrie in this most recent iteration of their relationship. In “And Just Like That …” Season 2, he refused to set foot in Carrie’s house — a melodramatic boundary rooted in old cheating wounds Carrie had apologized for time and again. But then Carrie went and sold it and bought the Gramercy townhouse that he all but refuses, essentially, to set foot in today.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 3, Episode 2 Recap: Textual Relations

      by

      Carrie’s long-distance “situationship” with Aidan becomes frustrating in ways she didn’t anticipate.Season 3, Episode 2: ‘The Rat Race’Here in the real world, it’s a common refrain from single people that dating apps are as tired as the tiramisu Seema’s date orders for her without asking. Everyone is sick of the swiping, the ghosting and the serial situationships. The virtual-first connections that seem essential to dating in 2025 have never played a major role in the “Sex and the City” franchise, mostly because the majority of this decades-spanning story has predated all that.But Carrie’s former neighbor Lisette (Katerina Tannenbaum) shows up at the beginning of Episode 2 to reflect that cultural shift, lamenting to Carrie that, as a single woman of today, she is mostly in a relationship with her phone. Turns out, throwing it across a room may be a more effective way of it helping you meet someone.Some of the characters, though, regardless of age, are no better than Lisette when it comes to phone addiction.Starting with our star, Carrie is in something of a love-hate relationship with texting Aidan. Now that Aidan has cracked the communication door ajar, Carrie feels slightly more empowered to reach out to her “boyfriend.” (I insist on putting that in quotes because while Carrie may use that word to refer to Aidan, at this point, I simply refuse.)First, Carrie drafts a long, meandering voice text to Aidan about a newly-discovered rat infestation in her garden, but she deletes it before sending. Considering Aidan’s request for no contact (or at least very limited contact), she determines it is best to leave him alone.But without any such regard for the rules he set himself, Aidan lights his no-contact contract on fire with a surprise appearance at Carrie’s Gramercy townhouse, to her delight.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 3 Premiere Recap: Outlook Good

      by

      The new season opener found most of the women prioritizing their men’s needs over their own. That didn’t seem likely to last.My jaw is bruised from hitting the floor when Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) tells her gal pals that her boyfriend, Aidan (John Corbett), asked for “no communication” while he deals with family issues — and that she is just fine with giving it to him. No communication. For five full years. And this is supposed to be love?Let’s review how we got here. At the end of Season 2 of “And Just Like That …,” the on-again lovers Carrie and Aidan found themselves at an impasse when Aidan’s son, Wyatt, hit hard times. Wyatt needed paternal supervision — so much so, apparently, that Aidan felt compelled to devote himself to it entirely back home in Virginia. The Gramercy palace Carrie had just purchased for the two of them became a reluctant bachelorette pad, and their love was relegated to a long-distance situationship.At that point, we knew Carrie and Aidan were going to hold onto their love connection but weren’t going to visit each other — as implausible as that seemed alone. What was less apparent until the first few moments of Season 3 was that they weren’t going to speak, period. No texting, no FaceTime, not even the occasional Instagram like. The only hellos they’re exchanging are blank postcards, which they’re each sending back and forth between Virginia and New York, and for Carrie, this is apparently enough. Right.This no-contact-but-stay-together setup was never realistic — even if we suspended every possible disbelief. It is even more absurd that Carrie plays along.It doesn’t take long for Aidan to break his own rule, though. All he needed were three beers and a good, old-fashioned “ache.” He buzz-dials Carrie out of nowhere and lures her into one-sided, rather frantic phone sex. (Carrie may have been more enthusiastic if not for the beady eyes of her kitty-cat, Shoe, who was watching from the edge of the bed. But between that, Aidan’s intoxicated grunts, and a disruptive horn-blare, she just couldn’t quite get there.)Not long after, Carrie calls up Aidan for Round 2, but the time is no good for Aidan. He is back on Wyatt patrol, lying in bed beside his sleeping son. Carrie hangs up in shame.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      As ‘Sex and the City’ Ages, Some Find the Cosmo Glass Half-Empty

      by

      As the show became more widely available on Netflix, younger viewers have watched it with a critical eye. But its longtime millennial and Gen X fans can’t quit.Most weeks, hundreds of people board a “Sex and the City” themed bus in Manhattan that takes them to the show’s most recognizable sites: Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment, her favorite brunch spot, a sex shop in the West Village. The tour usually ends with — what else? — a Cosmopolitan.“It never gets old,” said Georgette Blau, the owner of On Location Tours. It’s a three-and-a-half-hour entry into an aspirational world many of the riders had been watching for decades, she said.Twenty years since the series finale of “Sex and the City” aired, a new generation of television watchers has grown into adulthood. After all of the episodes were released on Netflix this month, media watchers wondered how the show — and Carrie’s behavior — might hold up for Gen Z.Would they be able to handle the occasional raunchiness of the show, the sometimes toxic relationships? Were the references outdated? “Can Gen Z Even Handle Sex and the City?” Vanity Fair asked. (For its part, Gen Z seems to vacillate between being uninterested and lightly appalled about what they consider to be a period piece.)The show had a very different effect on its longtime fans, many of them a generation or two older. When it aired, “Sex and the City” changed the conversation around how women dated, developed friendships and moved about the world in their 30s and 40s.Even if some of the show’s character arcs aged poorly, many of its original fans still relate to Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda, no matter how unrealistic it may have been to live on the Upper East Side with a walk-in closet full of Manolo Blahniks on the salary of a weekly newspaper columnist.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More